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Kroger Co. is opening new convenience store concepts featuring fresh foods as it tries to capture a bigger share of that growing segment.

The Cincinnati-based supermarket operator started adding the stores in a few markets where it already operates grocery stores, CFO Michael Schlotman said at a BMO Capital Markets investor conference last month. The trial is still early and not big enough to call a full test, he said.

“We think there is something there,” he said at the conference. “These are a little bit bigger convenience stores. They would have a fresh presentation. They’d have some fresh meat, fresh produce, a little bit more in the deli than just the hot dogs on the heater.”

Kroger is trying to duplicate a concept it started several years ago in Wichita, Kan., Schlotman said. Kroger also would consider acquiring convenience stores in markets where it already operates supermarkets, he said.

“We like the fill-in opportunity of having some of those convenience stores fill in parts of the cities where it may not be big enough to build a full-line supermarket,” he said.

This is just the latest Kroger move in the convenience market. Kroger has been expanding its Turkey Hill convenience store chain from Pennsylvania into Columbus and Indianapolis the past few years. It doesn’t operate any locally.

It also opened its first robotic convenience-store kiosk at Ohio Northern University in Ada in January.

Kroger operates 791 such stores, about one-third as many as the 2,435 supermarket and multidepartment stores it runs. It doesn’t report sales for convenience stories. But a catch-all category of non-supermarket sales that includes convenience stores made up 7 percent of revenue last year and turned in 20 percent growth.